Mobile Media & Communication 2013 Humphreys 20 5
Content
459499
MMC1110.1177/2050157912459499Mobile Media & CommunicationHumphreys
13
Broader issues of mobile communication studies
Mobile social media: Future
challenges and opportunities
Mobile Media & Communication
1(1) 20–25
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2050157912459499
mmc.sagepub.com
Lee Humphreys
Cornell University, USA
Abstract
This article explores the future research opportunities and challenges of mobile social
media. First, I problematize what constitutes the boundaries of mobile social media.
Distinctions between location-based mobile social networks and non-location-based
mobile social networks are established to suggest that the mobility of social media is
in fact much broader than location alone. Second, several key theoretical questions
are identified for future exploration, including micro, meso, and macro-level theories.
Lastly, methodological challenges and opportunities are reflected upon and culminate
in the call for multi-disciplinary programs of research to fully understand the role of
mobile social media in the world today.
Keywords
Methodology, mobile social media, mobile social networks, social media, theory
To understand mobile social media, we need to look back before we can look forward.
One of the first mobile social media commercially developed was the Lovegety in Japan
(Iwatani, 1998; Reuters, 1998). The Lovegety was a stand-alone device that would fit in
the palm of the hand and beep when it was within 5 meters of another device. There were
“pink girl” devices and “blue boy” devices each with three settings: “let’s chat,” “let’s
karaoke,” or “get2.” The devices beeped and flashed green when two co-located devices
were on the same setting (e.g., both devices were set to “let’s chat”). The devices would
beep and flash red when they were on different settings. According to one account, users
would turn down the volumes, hide the devices, and pretend they did not have a device
if they did not like the looks of the other Lovegety user (Iwatani, 1998).
There were two kinds of information exchanged using the Lovegety. First, it exchanged
information regarding the identification of people who were interested in using a mobile
device to meet other people; second, it exchanged information regarding what kind of
social interaction each person was looking for. The information exchanged was rather
Corresponding author:
Lee Humphreys, Cornell University, 305 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
21
Humphreys
simplistic, but it allowed people to have interactions with strangers in public spaces
mediated by mobile devices without divulging personal identifying information, such as
mobile phone numbers or even names.
The example of the Lovegety highlights several important points about contemporary
mobile social media. First, the fact that was an independent device seems odd in today’s
mobile phone and app-centric environment. The smartness of mobile phones may vary,
but the centrality of the device itself in the contemporary media landscape has shifted
dramatically from the time of the Lovegety in the late 1990s. The mobile phone is the
medium of choice, globally outpacing PC use more than three to one (ITU, 2011).
Second, the Lovegety was not GPS-based, nor even network-based. Its connectivity
was based on proximity, not locality. Today some mobile social networks are locationbased, but some are not. Nevertheless, the locality in which media is consumed can be a
factor in where and how people use mobile social media. Indeed even if the term “mobile”
disappears from our descriptions of mobile media usage, the mobility of media production
and consumption may indeed still impact practices and flows of communication.
Lastly, the Lovegety was primarily meant to introduce new people; however, it was
not always used to do so. While some mobile social media introduce new people, this is
often a secondary purpose (Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007; Lindqvist, Cranshaw, Wiese,
Hong, & Zimmerman, 2011). Some of the most interesting and suggestive moments in
research about mobile social media are those seemingly at the edges of use. For example,
Halegoua, Leavitt , and Gray (2012) explore the practice of Foursquare jumping where
Indonesian users check in to locations where they have actually never been.
Redrawing boundaries of mobile social media
Mobile social media can loosely be considered software, applications, or services
accessed through mobile devices that allow users to connect with other people and to
share information, news, and content. The challenges of drawing boundaries of mobile
social media are twofold. First, what is and is not social media is blurring as social
media tools are increasingly integrated into various aspects of mediated communication
(Lüders, 2008). Second, what is considered mobile communication technology is also
changing. As we move from mobile phones to smartphones to tablets to netbooks to
laptops, we are changing both mobility and computing power not categorically, but in
terms of degrees. Thus strict definitions are not always helpful because new advancements will often change what is considered inside or outside of these boundaries.
Nevertheless, we can begin to identify different kinds of services such as (micro) blogs
like Twitter, social network sites like Facebook, wikis like Wikipedia, video or photo
sharing services like YouTube and Flickr, recommendation services like Yelp, and location-sharing services like Foursquare, which all might be categorized as falling under
the umbrella of mobile social media.
While five years ago there were clearer distinctions between mobile and online
social media, increasingly we’re seeing these blurring. Early mobile social media were
primarily designed for a mobile device and emphasized the presumed mobility of users
in the design, often through location-based services: that is, services where information
presented to users is based on their physical locality (Sutko & de Souza e Silva, 2011;
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
22
Mobile Media & Communication 1(1)
Wang & Canny, 2006). Dodgeball (Humphreys, 2007), Foursquare (Frith, 2012;
Lindqvist et al., 2011; Schwartz, forthcoming), Loopt, and Brightkite (de Souza e Silva
& Frith, 2010; Sutko & de Souza e Silva, 2011) are examples of such location-based
mobile social networks. Location-based systems that help users find services in the
geographical landscape (e.g.,Yelp) can also involve social networking components.
However, mobile social media do not have to be location-based. Cross-platform social
media, like Twitter and Facebook, raise the question about what exactly is and isn’t
mobile media. When does mobility matter and when does it not? Both Facebook and
Twitter have specific location-based functionalities (check-ins and locating Tweets),
but that does not define their mobile presence. Indeed according to Facebook (Protalinski,
2012), of the 901 million active monthly users, 488 million of them used Facebook
through a mobile device – either a phone or a tablet. Increasingly people are accessing
social media on mobile devices. These are not necessarily location-aware services, nevertheless accessing such media on mobile devices may involve the mobility of users and
services in various ways. Much of the research on mobile social networks has centered
on the location-based mobile social networks (e.g., de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010;
Erickson, 2009; Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007, 2010, 2011; Lindqvis et al., 2011).
Non-location-based mobile social media have not been widely examined. There are
also mobile location-based services that would not necessarily be considered mobile
social media, such as Google Maps or logistical systems for large-scale transportation
services. Just as we need to study non-location-based social media, we also need to
understand location-based communication systems beyond the scope of social media. It
is my hope that this journal will become a home for exploring the boundaries and
practices regarding many different kinds of mobile media and communication.
Little devices, big questions
Several important theoretical questions arise regarding the changing nature of mobile
social media. First, how do mobile social media reflect and refract the culture that produces and consumes such a technology? Second, reoccurring questions about power and
equality need to be directed at mobile social networks. How do offline power structures
become re-produced in mobile social media? How are gender, class, and religious
difference re-produced in mobile social media? What are the institutions that shape the
economic, technological, and social structures of mobile social media? On a micro level,
how do we see social identity performed through mobile social media? What is the
changing nature of social interactions through and around mobile social media? To answer
these questions, we could draw on a variety of theoretical frameworks. To varying degrees,
they all assume a social shaping of technology approach (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999),
which suggests that a variety of technical, social, economic, cultural, and political factors
influence the role and impact of mobile social media.
For many in the developed world, our internet use started out on a computer and
moved to a mobile phone; however, globally, more people will be accessing the internet through a mobile device than through a desktop or laptop computer. When people
access the internet with their phones, unsurprisingly, they often use social media
(Donner & Gitau, 2009). This may fundamentally change the way to think about what
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
23
Humphreys
the internet is and what it can do. Much of the adoption and appropriation research
about mobile social media is based on people who started out on a computer and
moved to a mobile phone (e.g., Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007, 2010). In the next five
years, many people will be coming online for the first time through their mobile
devices and chances are they will be using social media. Questions regarding social
identity, communication patterns and flows, economic and social development,
political and civic participation, privacy and surveillance, and processes of cultural
production should be carefully explored.
Affordance theory (Graver, 1991; Norman, 2002) might suggest that one of the reasons why mobile social media is so compelling is because the means of media production, distribution, and consumption are on the same device. People can take a photo or
video with their phone and send it out to their friends, who can then get it on their
phones. Through mobile social media like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, it can spread
faster than just texting a message to contacts. In places like South Africa, it’s cheaper to
send a message via mobile social media, like MXit, than it is to send an SMS (Donner &
Gitau, 2009). From a video of a baby taking her first steps to one capturing political
abuses or illicit polling practices, the fact that cameraphones are increasingly accessible
means that we can capture and share these small and large momentous events quickly
and easily. As such, mobile social media can both accelerate the rate of exchange and
broaden the potential audience of such messages.
Empirical challenges and opportunities
One of the challenges of studying mobile social media is access to users and content.
Despite the prevalence of mobile devices in the world, recruitment of mobile social
media users can be difficult. Privacy concerns may lead many users to close off public
access to their mobile social media use. As such, recruitment can be challenging.
Additionally, we know little about the content produced and consumed through mobile
social media. Research from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (Mitchell,
Rosenstiel, & Christian, 2012) suggests that people are increasingly accessing news
through mobile social media. As Boase (2013, in this issue) points out, how we collect
this data and define the analytical tools for studying mobile social media content are not
yet readily determined.
These same challenges, however, may also present methodological opportunities.
Increasingly, mobile phones are multi-media devices that allow for various kinds of data
to be captured. From an empirical perspective, if we could gain access to all of the communication exchanged on a mobile phone, from voice to text to email to social media, we
could begin to reveal larger patterns and flows across the various modes of communication. This could reveal important insights into communicative practices more broadly.
Log data from mobile phones are beginning to be analyzed by social scientists (e.g.,
Boase & Ling, 2011), but this is a relatively new arena of research. While mobile social
media may generate interesting data, we need to be cautious. Even if we can collect lots
of data, we must continually ask ourselves what is missing when interpreting our findings. As boyd and Crawford (2011) and Boase (2013, this issue) suggest, just because we
can collect the data does not mean it is the ethical thing to do. We need to think carefully
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
24
Mobile Media & Communication 1(1)
about what our data represent as well as what kinds of claims and inferences we can
make from them.
Mobile social media also lend themselves to mixed method studies as well, particularly those that combine social network analysis or log data with interpretive work.
While mixed methods are not always possible within studies, it can be helpful to think
about mixed methods research programs more broadly. Hopefully this journal becomes
a home for qualitative and quantitative studies of mobile social networks. In addition to
empirical studies, we must draw on historical, discursive, and critical approaches to studying mobile social media in order to situate its role more broadly in society. It is my hope
that this journal becomes an intellectual home for careful scholarship of a variety of paradigmatic approaches and methodologies in order to deepen our collective understanding
of the role and impact of mobile social media globally.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
References
Boase, J. (2013). Implications of software-based mobile media for social research. Mobile Media
& Communication, 1(1), 57–62.
Boase, J., & Ling, R. (2011). Measuring mobile phone use: Self-report versus log data. Paper
presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Boston,
MA, May 26–30.
boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2011). Six provations for big data. Paper presented at A Decade in
Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, Oxford, UK, September
2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926431 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.1926431
de Souza e Silva, A., & Frith, J. (2010). Locative mobile social networks: Mapping communication
and location in urban spaces. Mobilities, 5(4), 485–505. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2010.510332
Donner, J., & Gitau, S. (2009). New paths: Exploring mobile-centric internet use in South Africa.
Paper presented at the International Communication Association Preconference on Mobile
Communication, Chicago, IL.
Erickson, I. (2009). Locative technologies and the organization of place and space. Paper
presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Conference, August 8–11,
2009, San Francisco, CA.
Frith, J. (2012). Location-based social networks and mobility patterns: An empirical examination
of how Foursquare use affects where people go. Paper presented at the Mobilities Conference:
Local & Mobile, North Carolina State University, March, Raleigh, NC.
Graver, W.W. (1991). Technology affordances. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching through Technology, March,
New Orleans, LO.
Halegoua, G., Leavitt, A., & Gray, M. (2012). Jumping for fun? Negotiating mobility and the geopolitics of Foursquare. Paper presented at the Mobilities Conference: Local & Mobile, March
16–18, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.
Humphreys, L. (2007). Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball.
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 17.
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
25
Humphreys
Humphreys, L. (2010). Mobile social networks and urban public space. New Media & Society,
12(5), 763–778.
Humphreys, L. (2011). Who’s watching whom? A study of interactive technology and surveillance.
Journal of Communication, 61, 575–595.
ITU (International Telecommunication Union) 2011. Measuring the information society. Annual
report, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved from www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/backgrounders/
general/pdf/5.pdf
Iwatani, Y. (1998, June 11th). Love: Japanese style. Wired News.
Lindqvist, J., Cranshaw, J., Wiese, J., Hong, J., & Zimmerman, J. (2011). I’m the mayor of my house:
Examining why people use Foursquare – a social-driven location sharing application. Paper
presented at the Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Luders, M. (2008). Conceptualizing personal media. New Media & Society, 10(5), 683–702. doi:
10.1177/146144480809435
MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1999). The social shaping of technology (2nd edition).
Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Christian, L. (2012). Mobile devices and news consumption: Some
good signs for journalism. The state of the media news 2012. Pew Research Center’s Project
for Excellence in Journalism. Retrieved from http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devicesand-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/
Norman, D.A. (2002). The design of everyday things. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Protalinski, E. (2012, April 23). Facebook has over 901 million users, over 488 mobile users.
ZDNet. Retrieved September 20, 2012 from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebookhas-over-901-million-users-over-488-million-mobile-users/12105
Rainie, L. (2012). Tablet and e-book reader ownership nearly double over the holiday gift-giving
period. Pew Internet and American Life. January 23, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://
cms.pewresearch.org/pewinternet/files/2012/03/Pew_Tablets-and-e-readers-double-1.23.2012.
pdf
Reuters (1998). Bleep at first sight. Wired.com. Retrieved April 8 2008, from http://www.wired.
com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/05/12342
Schwartz, R. (forthcoming). The networked familiar stranger: An aspect of virtual and local urban
anonymity. In K. Cumiskey, & L. Hjorth (Eds.), Seamlessly mobile? Mobile media practices,
presence & politics. London, UK: Routledge.
Sutko, D. M., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability.
New Media & Society, 13(5), 807–823. doi: 10.1177/1461444810385202
Wang, J., & Canny, J. (2006). End-user place annotation on mobile devices: A comparative study.
In Proc. CHI’06 (pp. 1493–1498), New York, NY: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1125451.1125725
Author biography
Lee Humphreys (PhD, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania)
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. She studies
the social uses and perceived effects of communication technology. Her research has explored
mobile phone use in public spaces, emerging norms on mobile social networks, and the privacy
and surveillance implications of location-based services. Her recent scholarship tries to historicize
social media into a broader context of communication practices. Often using qualitative field
methods, she focuses on how people integrate communication technology in their everyday lives
in order to facilitate identity management and social interaction.
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
MMC1110.1177/2050157912459499Mobile Media & CommunicationHumphreys
13
Broader issues of mobile communication studies
Mobile social media: Future
challenges and opportunities
Mobile Media & Communication
1(1) 20–25
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2050157912459499
mmc.sagepub.com
Lee Humphreys
Cornell University, USA
Abstract
This article explores the future research opportunities and challenges of mobile social
media. First, I problematize what constitutes the boundaries of mobile social media.
Distinctions between location-based mobile social networks and non-location-based
mobile social networks are established to suggest that the mobility of social media is
in fact much broader than location alone. Second, several key theoretical questions
are identified for future exploration, including micro, meso, and macro-level theories.
Lastly, methodological challenges and opportunities are reflected upon and culminate
in the call for multi-disciplinary programs of research to fully understand the role of
mobile social media in the world today.
Keywords
Methodology, mobile social media, mobile social networks, social media, theory
To understand mobile social media, we need to look back before we can look forward.
One of the first mobile social media commercially developed was the Lovegety in Japan
(Iwatani, 1998; Reuters, 1998). The Lovegety was a stand-alone device that would fit in
the palm of the hand and beep when it was within 5 meters of another device. There were
“pink girl” devices and “blue boy” devices each with three settings: “let’s chat,” “let’s
karaoke,” or “get2.” The devices beeped and flashed green when two co-located devices
were on the same setting (e.g., both devices were set to “let’s chat”). The devices would
beep and flash red when they were on different settings. According to one account, users
would turn down the volumes, hide the devices, and pretend they did not have a device
if they did not like the looks of the other Lovegety user (Iwatani, 1998).
There were two kinds of information exchanged using the Lovegety. First, it exchanged
information regarding the identification of people who were interested in using a mobile
device to meet other people; second, it exchanged information regarding what kind of
social interaction each person was looking for. The information exchanged was rather
Corresponding author:
Lee Humphreys, Cornell University, 305 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
21
Humphreys
simplistic, but it allowed people to have interactions with strangers in public spaces
mediated by mobile devices without divulging personal identifying information, such as
mobile phone numbers or even names.
The example of the Lovegety highlights several important points about contemporary
mobile social media. First, the fact that was an independent device seems odd in today’s
mobile phone and app-centric environment. The smartness of mobile phones may vary,
but the centrality of the device itself in the contemporary media landscape has shifted
dramatically from the time of the Lovegety in the late 1990s. The mobile phone is the
medium of choice, globally outpacing PC use more than three to one (ITU, 2011).
Second, the Lovegety was not GPS-based, nor even network-based. Its connectivity
was based on proximity, not locality. Today some mobile social networks are locationbased, but some are not. Nevertheless, the locality in which media is consumed can be a
factor in where and how people use mobile social media. Indeed even if the term “mobile”
disappears from our descriptions of mobile media usage, the mobility of media production
and consumption may indeed still impact practices and flows of communication.
Lastly, the Lovegety was primarily meant to introduce new people; however, it was
not always used to do so. While some mobile social media introduce new people, this is
often a secondary purpose (Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007; Lindqvist, Cranshaw, Wiese,
Hong, & Zimmerman, 2011). Some of the most interesting and suggestive moments in
research about mobile social media are those seemingly at the edges of use. For example,
Halegoua, Leavitt , and Gray (2012) explore the practice of Foursquare jumping where
Indonesian users check in to locations where they have actually never been.
Redrawing boundaries of mobile social media
Mobile social media can loosely be considered software, applications, or services
accessed through mobile devices that allow users to connect with other people and to
share information, news, and content. The challenges of drawing boundaries of mobile
social media are twofold. First, what is and is not social media is blurring as social
media tools are increasingly integrated into various aspects of mediated communication
(Lüders, 2008). Second, what is considered mobile communication technology is also
changing. As we move from mobile phones to smartphones to tablets to netbooks to
laptops, we are changing both mobility and computing power not categorically, but in
terms of degrees. Thus strict definitions are not always helpful because new advancements will often change what is considered inside or outside of these boundaries.
Nevertheless, we can begin to identify different kinds of services such as (micro) blogs
like Twitter, social network sites like Facebook, wikis like Wikipedia, video or photo
sharing services like YouTube and Flickr, recommendation services like Yelp, and location-sharing services like Foursquare, which all might be categorized as falling under
the umbrella of mobile social media.
While five years ago there were clearer distinctions between mobile and online
social media, increasingly we’re seeing these blurring. Early mobile social media were
primarily designed for a mobile device and emphasized the presumed mobility of users
in the design, often through location-based services: that is, services where information
presented to users is based on their physical locality (Sutko & de Souza e Silva, 2011;
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
22
Mobile Media & Communication 1(1)
Wang & Canny, 2006). Dodgeball (Humphreys, 2007), Foursquare (Frith, 2012;
Lindqvist et al., 2011; Schwartz, forthcoming), Loopt, and Brightkite (de Souza e Silva
& Frith, 2010; Sutko & de Souza e Silva, 2011) are examples of such location-based
mobile social networks. Location-based systems that help users find services in the
geographical landscape (e.g.,Yelp) can also involve social networking components.
However, mobile social media do not have to be location-based. Cross-platform social
media, like Twitter and Facebook, raise the question about what exactly is and isn’t
mobile media. When does mobility matter and when does it not? Both Facebook and
Twitter have specific location-based functionalities (check-ins and locating Tweets),
but that does not define their mobile presence. Indeed according to Facebook (Protalinski,
2012), of the 901 million active monthly users, 488 million of them used Facebook
through a mobile device – either a phone or a tablet. Increasingly people are accessing
social media on mobile devices. These are not necessarily location-aware services, nevertheless accessing such media on mobile devices may involve the mobility of users and
services in various ways. Much of the research on mobile social networks has centered
on the location-based mobile social networks (e.g., de Souza e Silva & Frith, 2010;
Erickson, 2009; Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007, 2010, 2011; Lindqvis et al., 2011).
Non-location-based mobile social media have not been widely examined. There are
also mobile location-based services that would not necessarily be considered mobile
social media, such as Google Maps or logistical systems for large-scale transportation
services. Just as we need to study non-location-based social media, we also need to
understand location-based communication systems beyond the scope of social media. It
is my hope that this journal will become a home for exploring the boundaries and
practices regarding many different kinds of mobile media and communication.
Little devices, big questions
Several important theoretical questions arise regarding the changing nature of mobile
social media. First, how do mobile social media reflect and refract the culture that produces and consumes such a technology? Second, reoccurring questions about power and
equality need to be directed at mobile social networks. How do offline power structures
become re-produced in mobile social media? How are gender, class, and religious
difference re-produced in mobile social media? What are the institutions that shape the
economic, technological, and social structures of mobile social media? On a micro level,
how do we see social identity performed through mobile social media? What is the
changing nature of social interactions through and around mobile social media? To answer
these questions, we could draw on a variety of theoretical frameworks. To varying degrees,
they all assume a social shaping of technology approach (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999),
which suggests that a variety of technical, social, economic, cultural, and political factors
influence the role and impact of mobile social media.
For many in the developed world, our internet use started out on a computer and
moved to a mobile phone; however, globally, more people will be accessing the internet through a mobile device than through a desktop or laptop computer. When people
access the internet with their phones, unsurprisingly, they often use social media
(Donner & Gitau, 2009). This may fundamentally change the way to think about what
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
23
Humphreys
the internet is and what it can do. Much of the adoption and appropriation research
about mobile social media is based on people who started out on a computer and
moved to a mobile phone (e.g., Frith, 2012; Humphreys, 2007, 2010). In the next five
years, many people will be coming online for the first time through their mobile
devices and chances are they will be using social media. Questions regarding social
identity, communication patterns and flows, economic and social development,
political and civic participation, privacy and surveillance, and processes of cultural
production should be carefully explored.
Affordance theory (Graver, 1991; Norman, 2002) might suggest that one of the reasons why mobile social media is so compelling is because the means of media production, distribution, and consumption are on the same device. People can take a photo or
video with their phone and send it out to their friends, who can then get it on their
phones. Through mobile social media like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, it can spread
faster than just texting a message to contacts. In places like South Africa, it’s cheaper to
send a message via mobile social media, like MXit, than it is to send an SMS (Donner &
Gitau, 2009). From a video of a baby taking her first steps to one capturing political
abuses or illicit polling practices, the fact that cameraphones are increasingly accessible
means that we can capture and share these small and large momentous events quickly
and easily. As such, mobile social media can both accelerate the rate of exchange and
broaden the potential audience of such messages.
Empirical challenges and opportunities
One of the challenges of studying mobile social media is access to users and content.
Despite the prevalence of mobile devices in the world, recruitment of mobile social
media users can be difficult. Privacy concerns may lead many users to close off public
access to their mobile social media use. As such, recruitment can be challenging.
Additionally, we know little about the content produced and consumed through mobile
social media. Research from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (Mitchell,
Rosenstiel, & Christian, 2012) suggests that people are increasingly accessing news
through mobile social media. As Boase (2013, in this issue) points out, how we collect
this data and define the analytical tools for studying mobile social media content are not
yet readily determined.
These same challenges, however, may also present methodological opportunities.
Increasingly, mobile phones are multi-media devices that allow for various kinds of data
to be captured. From an empirical perspective, if we could gain access to all of the communication exchanged on a mobile phone, from voice to text to email to social media, we
could begin to reveal larger patterns and flows across the various modes of communication. This could reveal important insights into communicative practices more broadly.
Log data from mobile phones are beginning to be analyzed by social scientists (e.g.,
Boase & Ling, 2011), but this is a relatively new arena of research. While mobile social
media may generate interesting data, we need to be cautious. Even if we can collect lots
of data, we must continually ask ourselves what is missing when interpreting our findings. As boyd and Crawford (2011) and Boase (2013, this issue) suggest, just because we
can collect the data does not mean it is the ethical thing to do. We need to think carefully
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
24
Mobile Media & Communication 1(1)
about what our data represent as well as what kinds of claims and inferences we can
make from them.
Mobile social media also lend themselves to mixed method studies as well, particularly those that combine social network analysis or log data with interpretive work.
While mixed methods are not always possible within studies, it can be helpful to think
about mixed methods research programs more broadly. Hopefully this journal becomes
a home for qualitative and quantitative studies of mobile social networks. In addition to
empirical studies, we must draw on historical, discursive, and critical approaches to studying mobile social media in order to situate its role more broadly in society. It is my hope
that this journal becomes an intellectual home for careful scholarship of a variety of paradigmatic approaches and methodologies in order to deepen our collective understanding
of the role and impact of mobile social media globally.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
References
Boase, J. (2013). Implications of software-based mobile media for social research. Mobile Media
& Communication, 1(1), 57–62.
Boase, J., & Ling, R. (2011). Measuring mobile phone use: Self-report versus log data. Paper
presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Boston,
MA, May 26–30.
boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2011). Six provations for big data. Paper presented at A Decade in
Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, Oxford, UK, September
2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926431 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.1926431
de Souza e Silva, A., & Frith, J. (2010). Locative mobile social networks: Mapping communication
and location in urban spaces. Mobilities, 5(4), 485–505. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2010.510332
Donner, J., & Gitau, S. (2009). New paths: Exploring mobile-centric internet use in South Africa.
Paper presented at the International Communication Association Preconference on Mobile
Communication, Chicago, IL.
Erickson, I. (2009). Locative technologies and the organization of place and space. Paper
presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Conference, August 8–11,
2009, San Francisco, CA.
Frith, J. (2012). Location-based social networks and mobility patterns: An empirical examination
of how Foursquare use affects where people go. Paper presented at the Mobilities Conference:
Local & Mobile, North Carolina State University, March, Raleigh, NC.
Graver, W.W. (1991). Technology affordances. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching through Technology, March,
New Orleans, LO.
Halegoua, G., Leavitt, A., & Gray, M. (2012). Jumping for fun? Negotiating mobility and the geopolitics of Foursquare. Paper presented at the Mobilities Conference: Local & Mobile, March
16–18, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.
Humphreys, L. (2007). Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball.
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 17.
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
25
Humphreys
Humphreys, L. (2010). Mobile social networks and urban public space. New Media & Society,
12(5), 763–778.
Humphreys, L. (2011). Who’s watching whom? A study of interactive technology and surveillance.
Journal of Communication, 61, 575–595.
ITU (International Telecommunication Union) 2011. Measuring the information society. Annual
report, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved from www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/backgrounders/
general/pdf/5.pdf
Iwatani, Y. (1998, June 11th). Love: Japanese style. Wired News.
Lindqvist, J., Cranshaw, J., Wiese, J., Hong, J., & Zimmerman, J. (2011). I’m the mayor of my house:
Examining why people use Foursquare – a social-driven location sharing application. Paper
presented at the Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Luders, M. (2008). Conceptualizing personal media. New Media & Society, 10(5), 683–702. doi:
10.1177/146144480809435
MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1999). The social shaping of technology (2nd edition).
Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Christian, L. (2012). Mobile devices and news consumption: Some
good signs for journalism. The state of the media news 2012. Pew Research Center’s Project
for Excellence in Journalism. Retrieved from http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devicesand-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/
Norman, D.A. (2002). The design of everyday things. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Protalinski, E. (2012, April 23). Facebook has over 901 million users, over 488 mobile users.
ZDNet. Retrieved September 20, 2012 from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebookhas-over-901-million-users-over-488-million-mobile-users/12105
Rainie, L. (2012). Tablet and e-book reader ownership nearly double over the holiday gift-giving
period. Pew Internet and American Life. January 23, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://
cms.pewresearch.org/pewinternet/files/2012/03/Pew_Tablets-and-e-readers-double-1.23.2012.
Reuters (1998). Bleep at first sight. Wired.com. Retrieved April 8 2008, from http://www.wired.
com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/05/12342
Schwartz, R. (forthcoming). The networked familiar stranger: An aspect of virtual and local urban
anonymity. In K. Cumiskey, & L. Hjorth (Eds.), Seamlessly mobile? Mobile media practices,
presence & politics. London, UK: Routledge.
Sutko, D. M., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability.
New Media & Society, 13(5), 807–823. doi: 10.1177/1461444810385202
Wang, J., & Canny, J. (2006). End-user place annotation on mobile devices: A comparative study.
In Proc. CHI’06 (pp. 1493–1498), New York, NY: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/1125451.1125725
Author biography
Lee Humphreys (PhD, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania)
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. She studies
the social uses and perceived effects of communication technology. Her research has explored
mobile phone use in public spaces, emerging norms on mobile social networks, and the privacy
and surveillance implications of location-based services. Her recent scholarship tries to historicize
social media into a broader context of communication practices. Often using qualitative field
methods, she focuses on how people integrate communication technology in their everyday lives
in order to facilitate identity management and social interaction.
Downloaded from mmc.sagepub.com by guest on July 17, 2015
